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> Why is that a better question? The average household income in the US is about $88,000. The average household size is about 2.5 people. So the average person
by dodobirdlord 6y ago
> Why is that a better question?
The average household income in the US is about $88,000. The average household size is about 2.5 people. So the average person in the US is maintained on about $35,000 per year. This doesn’t include the reduction due to taxes, but in principle on average the reduction in taxes is returned back in the form of the average government spending per person, so we can call that a wash.
The fact that it is more than 14 times more expensive to maintain a person in prison vs out of prison is immediately suspicious.
- eyelidlessness 6y agoThe average person isn’t being held in a cage against their will, explicitly a charge of society, ostensibly for the purpose of rehabilitation, and widely understood to be under heightened threat of violence.
- dodobirdlord 6y agoObviously, but 14x?
- eyelidlessness 6y agoOkay so I’ll ask again: > What do you think would be an appropriate per-inmate budget?
- dodobirdlord 6y agoProbably somewhere around $200,000/year as a high water mark. That works out to the average cost of maintaining one person, plus 2x the average household income, which seems like a good proxy for the fully-loaded cost of maintaining a full-time staff member and associated infrastructure. Economies of scale suggest to me that at scale it should be possible to support a ratio of staff:inmates that is less than 1:1.